Of all the Victorians, William Morris perhaps came closest to filling
the outline of that egregious myth, the Renaissance Man. Only his
socialist convictions made him turn down the post of Poet Laureate
after Tennyson died. He translated the Icelandic sagas into English,
wrote News from Nowhere, one of the best Utopian novels in the history
of that genre, and was a charter member of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood. With John Ruskin, he was an influential agitator for
maintaining the integrity of the architectural past; dozens...